


And I Say It’s Alright

by mayamaia



Series: Old Man [3]
Category: Queen (Band), The Beatles (Band)
Genre: Does it count as fix-it if you don’t get that far into the actual fixing?, Freddie is a fan and a force of nature, Gen, Nothing’s gonna stop him now, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-24
Updated: 2019-12-24
Packaged: 2021-02-18 08:49:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21941410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mayamaia/pseuds/mayamaia
Summary: How WOULD Freddie respond to learning John Lennon got assassinated in Brian’s timeline? Well....
Relationships: Brian May & Freddie Mercury
Series: Old Man [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1550002
Comments: 13
Kudos: 46





	And I Say It’s Alright

**Author's Note:**

> This is basically a gift for my beta who has been a Beatles fan for 15 years longer than she’s been a Queen fan.
> 
> It’s also the reason I’m emphasizing that my one-shots can be independent cause I really am not enough of a Beatles girl myself to work out the logistics on this and so I don’t want to be sorting that out in my other fics.

It was late one morning, early for Freddie to be awake by normal standards, but everything had been shifted just that little off kilter recently. He had wandered into the sort of den where the television was, probably following the sound, to find Brian absolutely entranced by the television screen.

“It is so strange to see her like this,” Brian said.

Freddie glanced over at the screen, where some reporter was commenting on Prince Charles’s relationships, in this case the end of his romance with Lady Sarah Spencer. “Oh, does the lady win back the royal hand?”

Brian shook his head absently. “No, her sister. You knew her better than I.”

“Oh, a friend.” Freddie seemed a little more interested at that.

Brian laughed. “Both. Diana became the princess, and she was your friend, I think. A little. You at least helped her visit a bar dressed as a boy, once.”

Freddie smiled broadly. “Ooh, adventures of the Land That May Not Be! I shall be disappointed by anything less, you know.” He looked at the screen again, but it had moved on from the girls, so he couldn’t really remember what they had looked like. He asked Brian, “What was so odd to see her then? Does she become great and fat with age and importance?”

Brian’s face fell. “No, Freddie. She died a few years after you, in a car accident. Hounded by paparazzi.”

“Oh, shit.” Freddie gave a weak laugh of remorse, and said, “I suppose you did tell me everyone was dying for a while.”

“Yeah, it did seem that way.” Brian shifted on his feet, then went to turn off the TV.

Freddie shook his head. “I’d better not press you harder on that or next you’ll be telling me Macca died.”

Brian froze.

* * *

“Can you keep your voice down?!”

“I will not! It’s been fucking MONTHS, Brian, when were you going to tell me?!”

“Months. It’s been years, Fred! I don’t exactly think about him that often.”

“Well you bloody well should! Come here being all, ‘Oh I can mother hen at Freddie’ and you don’t think ONCE about people who really matter?!”

“Oh fucking… YOU really matter, and you’re actually a part of my life! And stop yelling!”

“Oh think of other people, Brian!”

John’s voice came from the doorway. “Good idea, can you two have your lovers’ spat in the studio where there’s sound proofing? Some of us have hangovers.” He turned away, and Brian heard him grumble, “Get it out with the usual musical masturbation,” as he disappeared down the hall.

He turned back to Freddie, who just nodded a _That way, **now.**_ towards the studio.

* * *

The moment the doors were shut, Freddie started up again. “Any normal person with information from the future should have sat down with a list of Things To Do, surely, and would have remembered that John Lennon fucking DIED, got murdered and at minimum...”

“Will you quit it, Freddie?! You want to know my list? My list is I am never going to see my daughters again because they’re off in my old timeline, and every other bloody thing pales into the background! I can’t preserve the very first thing that matters to me, so who fucking cares that I didn’t think about somebody I have never actually met? You can’t compare him to you either, Fred, you’re ...” and Brian’s voice trailed off.

Freddie huffed at him, crossed his arms and went to sit on the piano bench. “Alright. So how do we fix it?”

Brian scowled at him. “Do we? No qualms about the impact this could have on history?”

“Two can play at that, Brian. What if having a musician who works for _PEACE_ around for several more years makes _WARS_ end sooner or better? You aren’t going to pretend that the most likely result is nuclear holocaust, surely.”

“Fine. But I don’t know the name of the man who did it, and I do know it was planned ahead, so you try keeping him from just being in the wrong place at the wrong time, there’ll be another wrong place soon enough.”

Freddie looked up at him like he wasn’t willing to admit any of Brian’s caveats.

Brian went over to one of the amps and sat on it. “Paul might be able to do something.”

Freddie looked at him like he was nuts for half a moment, then his expression cleared. “Oh, of course, that Paul. How should he be any easier to contact or convince than Lennon, and aren’t they rather messily divorced?”

Brian snorted. “They might be, but Paul missed him terribly. We used to talk, a little.”

For the first time Freddie smiled at him again. “You got to being friends with Macca? Oh Brian, you forget just everything worth telling, don’t you?”

But Brian snapped at him, “Oh, yes, definitely, the most exclusive club I could have got into, for ‘My lead singer died and there is no fucking justice.’”

Freddie’s smile dropped. “Right. Sorry.” He shifted on the bench. “I am sorry, I should have thought.”

“That’s fine,” Brian said, “You just forgot.”

“Right.”

Brian ran his fingers over his hair. “At any rate, Paul might listen, he’s just about as magically minded as you are. And though he maybe couldn’t help directly he might have advice. They were more than close.”

Freddie nodded. “That’s something, then. How long have we got?”

Brian groaned and looked up at the ceiling. “December 1980. It was the day before one of our concerts, early in the month. More than two weeks before Christmas.”

“You are really crap at this.”

“Then YOU figure out who sent me back here and make them send Roger instead. My memory’s not going to get any better.” Brain looked away in frustration, then swung his head back. “The eighth.”

“Suddenly you’re certain? Very well.” Freddie dropped his head to think, then looked up. “We ought to get Roger in on this, you know. When were you planning on telling him and John?”

“When I don’t have to tell them the names of all the kids they won’t have.”

“Brian.”

“Look, you might be very open to the idea that I am not off my rocker, but Roger is the greatest skeptic on the planet. I’m not telling him until I have an act of God to back me up.” When Freddie just kept watching him, Brian sighed. “There’s a volcanic eruption in May or June 1980 on the west coast of America. We played there six weeks later, I got the t-shirt.”

“Too long. We’re going to need to put something together that can draw him out of range for as long as possible, and that’s going to mean long term logistics and it’s going to mean money.” Freddie softened a bit, and went over to put a hand on Brian’s shoulder. “I’ll help you talk to them.”

Brian’s head dropped and from behind the curtain of curls, he said, “We’re really going to change everything with this.”

Freddie lightly shook his shoulder. “You’re the one who said the butterfly math makes it so things might just as easily change nothing as everything and it would be impossible to see why.”

Brian shook his head, “Cold comfort, and everything tends towards entropy.”

“Translation?”

“Chaos. And cold.”

Freddie pulled him close and leaned his head against Brian’s shoulder. “All the more reason to bring back a little light then, hmm?”

Brian took the offered comfort and stood there for a few moments, while Freddie hummed and murmured,

_Little darling, it seems like years since it’s been here_   
_Here comes the sun, do do do do..._


End file.
